New barbarians 1986 by k.., p.29
New Barbarians (1986) by Kirk Mitchell, page 29
“Father of Romulus, I will not be denied,” he prayed, his lips thinned by the selfishness he was feeling, although there was nothing unseemly about addressing Mars in this manner.
As a child, he had been told time and again that the most efficacious prayers were those which struck a balance between the desires of the gods and men; and this was the bargain he was proposing: If Alope were spared tomorrow, Germanicus would not only revive a republic governed by pious farmer-soldiers instead of a dissipated oligarchy, he would restore the preeminence of Mars in the Roman pantheon.
The shame he now felt had little to do with this betrayal of Jupiter: he would have bartered away each and every self-absorbed deity on Olympus just to glimpse Alope through the fading light. It arose from the confession he made to himself that he ached to save her less for Rome’s good than his own. Yes, certainly, he did not believe he could endure a long civil war without her at his side. And, of necessity, such a struggle would preface the new order. But, when he imagined wading out to that canoe gently rocking in the cradle of the tules, truly he was thinking only of the tender set of her eyes, the honey of her skin, the laughter that flowed from her mouth all too rarely.
Suddenly he began dickering with Mars on the most violent of terms: “If she is taken, I will take myself!”
He paused, struck silent by his own desperation, then chuckled helplessly. “Even in this awful extremity, I'm not sure I believe.” And with these words, distant Olympus, hooded by god-wrath only seconds-before, became no more or no less than a volcanic cone on the rim of the Valley of the Mexicae, rapidly dissolving under a winter storm. “But, believe in the gods or not, I won’t be left alone again.”
The canoe.
He then realized with the blazing certainty of divine revelation that the canoe offered any solution he might desire. If it amused these restless gods, he might be permitted to penetrate Tenochtitlan’s defenses and free her. And if he failed—well, Death, even when stripped of her mostly charming promises, could still seduce a man with a naked offer of peace.
It would be dark soon: the canoe waited as impatiently as he did, straining against the reeds.
Yet, as he sat there testing the edge of his short sword with his thumb until it was crisscrossed with thin lines of red, the sense of duty that underscored his melancholy began creeping back up on him, quibbling with him from its hiding place in the shadows behind his eyes: If you die tonight there shall never arise another republic, Germanicus Julius. And what would be the effect of Caesar's death on those here who trust you with their lives?
“Yes, yes,” he muttered. Even at this moment, pili fire could be heard crackling across the lake: his legionaries and praetorians were dealing with the last Aztecan resistance in the Tepeyaca Fortress. “But I cannot abandon Alope any more than I can set fire to Curia.”
Nor could he hope for a spate of Dog Star weather, warm nights and blistering days that might evaporate enough water off Texcoco to allow his sand-galleys to ford. Even now there was a musty hint of rain in the air; the Pleiades and not Sirius dominated the darkening skies.
Germanicus rose, clasped his cloak around his shoulders, assured himself that his short sword was snug in its scabbard, then strode into the shallows. He had just set one foot inside the canoe when a voice halted him. Dropping his sandal back into the water, he averted his eyes from the figure standing on the bank.
“Lord Caesar?” Tora repeated himself.
“Yes... what is it?”
“Will you come with me? Yinshaya reveals a solution to us.”
Germanicus chased Tora’s heels to the bunker the Nihonian had appropriated to keep his charts and instruments out of the weather. Germanicus could recognize nothing in the idiosyncratic clutter that might bring Tora’s astounding promise to life, although he could not help but admire a relief map of Lake Texcoco for its accuracy: there loomed Tenochtitlan at the intersection of its web of causeways, safeguarded on the north and south by the Tepeyaca and the Acachinanco fortresses. Tora’s forefinger tapped the crowns of the cylindrical twins. “Herein lies the secret, Lord Caesar.”
Germanicus hiked an eyebrow. “To what?”
“To lowering the lake. It was foolish of me not to think of this sooner. One of Star-Sorter’s first lessons at the Serican academy was ‘The Might of the Void.’ ” Tora grinned triumphantly, as if with one word he had explained everything. “What constitutes this void?"
“Nothing. It is a complete absence.”
Germanicus was in no humor to bandy with him over machinalis scientia. “There is no such state,” he said crossly. “Even the upper heavens are constantly filled with a medium. We call this the aether. How else could light issue from place to place if not conveyed by a rarified material like this?”
Tora fought down an amused smile. “Void can exist, Lord Caesar. And once formed, it is so powerful teams of horses cannot tear it apart.”
Germanicus slowly shook his head. His thoughts were gravitating back toward the canoe.
“Does Lord Caesar doubt this?”
“I’m sorry, Tora-san, but I’m weary. Much remains to be done tonight. There’s the securing of the Tepeyaca Fortress—”
“Yes!” the man cried urgently. “Permit me to show you what the void has to do with Maxtla’s fortresses!”
Germanicus nodded sullenly.
“When I served the Aztecae with the Sericans, I visited the Tepeyaca many times. Its wails are made of huge stones, three paces thick and fitted so tightly even dust cannot sift between. But still, to keep moisture out of the grain, the Aztecae lined inside walls with sheets of bronze. These' they did lath and plaster over with many inches of lime. It is quite difficult to open the portal at lowermost level—several men must strain to do so.”
“I don’t see—”
“They can be made airtight—I can form voids within these structures. But they must be captured first, Lord Caesar.”
Germanicus sighed. “The Tepeyaca is nearly ours. But this is only so we can use it to launch an infantry assault down the last stretch of its causeway in the morning.”
“No, unnecessary. I will show!” Tora scurried around the model to a tripod table, returning with a tray clasped in his scrawny hands.
Germanicus’s heart sank even more: he had no idea what miracles could be worked with this jumble of mundane items: a pitcher of water, an earthenware dish, a chalice of inferior Alexandrian glass, a dollop of jelly that appeared to be Greek fire, some tinder vials, and a cork bung.
“Please, Lord Caesar. Imagine this to be the waters of Lake Texcoco.” Tora poured enough liquid into the dish to cover its bottom to a depth the thickness of his thumbnail. “The problem has been to lower them around Tenochtitlan, yes?”
Germanicus gazed at the dish, his eyes disinterested.
“We did breach the Great Dike, but it was not enough. We can build siphons, perhaps, but there is no time.” Tora coated one surface of the cork with Greek fire, then set this bung afloat on his artificial lake. It bobbed in time with his excited breath. “This will be Greek fire—much of it—placed in upper chambers of the fortresses.” Then he reached for a tinder vial. The legionary’s best friend in wet country like Hibernia, it was really no more than a twist of waxed paper tipped with phosphorous and sealed in a tube of glass so sheer it could be cracked with a light touch of the fingers. The phosphorous ignited as soon as it was exposed to oxygen.
The Nihonian now crushed one of these and touched the sallow flame to the cork. Quickly then, he covered this miniature conflagration by setting the upturned chalice on the dish. “This, let us say, is the Tepeyaca with Greek fire raging inside.” After a few seconds, the flare-up guttered and succumbed to wisps of smoke that befogged the inside of the glass.
Germanicus had been staring at the chalice several seconds before it dawned on him that—mysteriously, magically—three fingers of water had been sucked up into the vessel, leaving the dish as dry as a desert lake. “Good Jupiter—can this really work on the scale we require?”
“ Yinshaya assures me so, Lord Caesar.”
“But will enough volume be drawn up into the Tepeyaca Fortress so we can cross with our sand-galleys?”
Tora’s smile faded slightly. “With just one fortress ... it is in doubt.”
“Then we absolutely require the Acachinanco as well?”
Tora dipped his head once, then evaded Germanicus’s eyes. Neither man had to say that this redoubt was not yet in Roman hands.
Germanicus rushed up the steps.
He did not have far to go to find Rolf.
The centurion was sitting on his heels in the dithering light thrown by a praetorian warming fire, his cloak gathered around his legs. Anticipating Germanicus’s wishes before any word had been spoken, he rose a bit stiffly, grimacing. Even the whites of his eyes had been scorched by the blast on the Great Dike that afternoon. “Hail Kaiser,” he said quietly.
With his right hand, Germanicus pressed down on the man’s shoulder until they were both cross-legged on the ground—a display of equality that discomfited the nearby German guardsmen. Rolf smoothed his mustaches with his fingers. Tiny waves lapped the nearby shore, barking over a gravel of pumice. When Germanicus finally spoke, it was in a whisper. “The sister fortress to the Tepeyaca—”
“The Acachinanco?”
“Yes, it must be taken.”
“At first light then.” Rolf started to rise.
“No, tonight, my friend—now."
Expressionless, the centurion sat again.
“Both fortresses must be readied as soon as possible for something Tora has in mind. Something extraordinary. For this assault on the Acachinanco, I require capable men, veterans—”
“Germans.” Rolf nodded at the guardsmen: “I be sure of these praetorians. Good lads.”
Germanicus’s lips tussled down a sudden smile. “Yes, of course . . . Germans. Requisition whatever you need—make it known that this is at my bequest. And Rolf...” He started to reach for the man’s forearm, but found the gesture awkward and slowly withdrew his hand. “Preserve yourself. At all costs, preserve yourself. Only desperation makes me risk you like this. It shames me to make such extravagant use of your loyalty*to me—”
“Nay.” The centurion had straightened his back, and his eyes were brassy with challenge. “This assault, today’s thing on the Great Dike—these not be for you, Germanicus Julius Agricola.”
Not knowing what to say, Germanicus ventured a baffled grin. “For Caesar, then.”
These words spurred the centurion to an even hotter obstinacy, one that Germanicus knew could not be effaced by their affection for each other. “Nay, tomorrow’s attack be madness. A month no bread, no water—this city be ready to give up. So it not be for Rome either.”
The German praetorians who had been sharing the fire with Rolf started trickling away into the darkness. None wanted to be on hand when the order flew from Caesar to behead the insolent centurion.
The silence between Germanicus and his bodyguard turned cold and a little sinister. They avoided each other’s eyes.
“I be of few words,” Rolf went on at last, “and none serve me well enough now.” He stirred the coals with the heel of his boot, sending up a galaxy of sparks that quickly died in the dark chill.
“Is it that I seem of two minds?” Germanicus asked quietly.
Rolf chuckled humorlessly.
And Caesar knew then that that was it.
In his long experience with German legionaries, Germanicus had found that they would do anything demanded of them —unless they caught the slightest whiff of ambivalence lingering around their commander’s tent. Then, like children catching their parents in a mealy-mouthed lie, they became surly, even intractable. There was something in the soul of a Goth that hungered for singularity of purpose, and something in the sophistication of a Roman that denied the very existence of such a thing.
“You do not wish to attack the Acachinanco fortress.”
Rolf looked as if he had been cuffed. “I be of no mutinous mind. I do as I be commanded. You say. I go. Always!”
“Very well.” Hesitating, Germanicus knew that at last he had to unleash the unreasoning truth. “Then you don’t want to take the fortress for Alope’s sake.”
“I be fond of your consort. But a Roman hostage expects no rescue, and she now be a Roman hostage—aye?” Germanicus slowly nodded. Then he sensed what might restore the balance between them. It was Rolf’s uncertainty that was rebelling; he needed a grasp on his leader’s motives, even if they were imprudent. “You believe it wrong for me to risk an entire army to save a single woman.”
Rolf hitched his cloak around the lower half of his face so only his blazing eyes showed. He did not answer.
“I too believe it to be wrong, centurion. The worst thing I have ever done in arms.”
The German raised an eyebrow.
“What I intend is madness. But I am powerless against it. I cannot lose this woman—and live. She is more than desire. She—like you, my old friend—is necessity.”
Rolf remained enfolded in his cloak for a long moment,. then lowered it from his face as he carefully studied Germanicus’s eyes. “You know this to be high foolishness?”
“Yes. That is the reason for my low spirits.”
“You be mindful of your own madness?”
“Without lapse.”
Rolf gave a soft grunt of satisfaction, then rose. “I go now to rouse the lads for the Acachinanco fortress.” But he had taken only a few strides toward the praetorian bunkers when he spun around and said sternly, “Kaiser must show a new face to his legions, what if he be planning to take Tenochtitlan tomorrow. If this be madness—let it be a merry one!”
27
The sweet odor of ripe grain flowed out of the lowermost chamber of the Tepeyaca Fortress. Germanicus found it slightly sickening as he paced back and forth on one of the titanic bronze doors his legionaries had blasted down during their seizure of the bastion that afternoon. The lake chuckled around the foundations of the causeway he had just crossed without incident from the mainland. He now felt somewhat foolish that his guardsmen had persuaded him to trot all the way, his armor jingling with each hurried step.
This squad of praetorians had tramped on ahead to secure his way up the labyrinth staircases of the structure. They had been gone ten minutes, and Germanicus was growing increasingly impatient with their over-cautiousness in his behalf. The Nihonian and he needed to get inside—-without further delay—to assess the ballista damage the walls might have sustained.
From the direction of the Acachinanco Fortress came a cacophany of pili reports, so furious the multitudinous sounds melded into a consonance, a new and violent voice bellowing across the lake. Reflexively, he muttered a prayer to Mars in Rolf’s behalf, then turned to Tora, who was so deep in thought it was several seconds before he responded to Germanicus’s clearing of his throat.
“Lord Caesar?”
“Where do you intend to punch this large hole in the fortress wall?”
“Come, please ...” Tora said. The catwalk wound along the base of the redoubt a foot above its waterline. “Here. I will have your Cambrians tunnel through this wall below the waters.”
The surface of the lake was lustrous with oil rainbows from the leaking fuel of the swamped sand-galley. Germanicus fought the urge to ask once again, “Are you positive this will work?” Instead he murmured, “How long should it take the sappers to blast their way through?”
“I have been told no more than seven packs of niter—two hours.”
Germanicus nodded morosely, then strode back to the portal, resting his sandal on the enormous door. “What will you do about this?”
“Your maintenance smiths are making new—two for this fortress and two for Acachinanco.”
' “I see.”
Approaching footfalls echoed out of the chamber to their ears. Then a cedar-bark torch—most of the electricus variety were now useless for want of power cells which were probably corroding on a distant beach at the far end of the long supply line—began pushing back the darkness in an ever-widening circle. The praetorian centurion could be seen at its center, his shadow yawning out to greet Germanicus before he himself arrived to salute: “All’s well within, Caesar.”
Germanicus led Tora through the portal. A cool mustiness enfolded them. It was tomblike.
The stone floor was golden with grain dust, although it quickly became evident by the absence of a single whole kernel of maize that, during the past months of hardship, Maxtla had exhausted all of the food reserves he had stored here. They must have been considerable, for this chamber was half as wide as the spina of the Circus Maximus was long; and, although the walls tapered in toward a domed roof, the chambers were so expansive the Aztecan architectus had been constrained to support their ceilings with groves of stone columns. At Tora’s beckoning, they made a circuit of the exterior wall. The Nihonian meticulously inspected the plaster, then ran his fingers along the smooth, endlessly curving surface.
His verdict came with an apologetic smile: “Built according to Yinshaya, yes? It withstood all your ballistae could give.” He motioned for Germanicus to follow him up a broad flight of stairs.
A trough, its granite abraded to a slick glistening, ran up the center of the incline. “What was this for?” Germanicus asked.
“Packs of grain. They were hauled up this channel by men with tumplines on foreheads.”
“How was that considered practical? It would’ve required millions of man-trips to put up even a modest harvest.”
“Thousands of slaves did make it practical, Lord Caesar.”
Germanicus’s eyes seemed to be watching teams of gaunt men trudging up the ramp, sweaty heads bent forward, grunting like beasts against the drag of their burdens. “Entire tribes enslaved for want of a block and tackle?”
